Iran: Time to support existing opposition to Mullah tyranny

Par The Hon. David Kilgour
le 7 août 2008

The international community
appears to be increasingly aware that Iran's theocracy constitutes one of the
world's most oppressive governments. It continues to persecute minorities
(Arabs, Azeri's, Kurds, Turks, Baha'is, Jews and Christians) and women in a
species of gender apartheid (The life of a woman is worth half that of a man
in Iran). It jails, tortures and executes political prisoners, including
Canadian photo-journalist Zahra Kazemi, who was flogged and murdered in a
Tehran prison after being arrested for taking photos of a student protest in 2003.

The misogyny practised by the
ayatollahs includes the "right" to execute girls as young as nine
(Boys are not deemed adults until 15.). According to the 'Stop Child
Executions' organization (www.stopchildexecutions.com), there are more than 150
minors of both sexes on death row across Iran today. Eight were executed in
2007 and two already this year. Mona Mahmudnizhad was hanged in the 1980s as a
minor for teaching Bahai children in a period when they could not attend
regular classes.

Iran's regime is also a growing
threat to Middle Eastern and ultimately world peace. Having captured the
democratic revolution against shah Pahlavi in 1979, its clerics have since
created a country where many Iranians live in poverty, while increasing amounts
of growing national oil revenues are directed towards international terrorism
and development of nuclear bombs.

The regime uses negotiations with
UN agencies and other governments to conceal programs to make nuclear weapons.
In 2002, the opposition coalition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran
(NCRI), revealed the existence of two hidden nuclear facilities being built in
violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. If successful, President Ahmadinejad
would be in a position to fulfill his wish to annihilate neighbouring states
and to engage in other state-sponsored nuclear terrorism.

What can Canada do to encourage
regional peace, dignity for Iranians and a non-violent transition to better
governance? A good first stepwould be to cease appeasing Iran's dictatorship by
encouraging, instead of continuing to undermine, an important democratic
opponent: the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) (In English, the People's Mojahedin
Organization of Iran (PMOI). The PMOI is a major part of the NCRI.

Presumably following the earlier
leads of the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States, Paul
Martin as prime minister declared the PMOI a terrorist organization in Canada
in 2005. Jack Straw, who as the UK Home Secretary banned the organization there
in2001, admitted to the BBC five years afterwards that he did so to accommodate
Tehran's ayatollahs. Both the EU and the US appear to have done so for the same
reason, although the Bush administration went further when American aircraft
bombed PMOI settlements in Iraq during its invasion of the country in 2003. The
PMOI had renounced violence in 2001.

A motion passed by the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe earlier this year concluded the
continent was " no longer following the rule of law" when its Council
of Ministers chose to ignore the decision of the EU Court of First Instance,
which invalidated the terrorist listing of the PMOI.

Following a seven-year campaign
by the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, comprising more than
one hundred MPs and peers from across the political spectrum, an order was
recently passed by both houses of Parliament, which removed the ban on the PMOI
in Britain. The UK Court of Appeal had earlier ordered the government of Gordon
Brown to de-proscribe the PMOI, upholding the ruling by the Proscribed
Organizations Appeal Commission that the government decision to maintain the
ban was "flawed" and "perverse".

The judgement of the appeal court
stressed: "Neither in the open material nor in the closed material was
there any reliable evidence that PMOI is concerned in terrorism or has an
intention to resort to terrorist activities in the future."

The leader of the British
committee, Robin Corbett, noted after the ban was lifted, "The real
terrorists are in Tehran. They make the roadside bombs, and pay and then train
those who use them to kill British and coalition troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan."

Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of
the NCRI, joined the anti-shah movement as a university student in the 1970s.
His regime executed one of her sisters; the mullahs caused another to die under
torture. In Iran's 1980 election, Rajavi received more than 250,000 votes as a
candidate for Parliament. In June, 1981, she helped organize a peaceful march of
half a million Mojahedin supporters in Tehran, but was forced to flee the
country later when Khomeini unleashed his reign of terror.

NCRI members living outside Iran,
as a parliament in exile representing a range of political factions,
subsequently elected her to be the interim president of Iran in a transitional
government to run the country until a national election supervised by the UN
can be held within six months of the final day of the mullahs' regime.

Since becoming head of the NCRI,
Rajavi has led an international campaign to expose the ayatollahs' violations
of human dignity, continuing export of terrorism, and ongoing quest to build
nuclear weapons. She and the NCRI stand for a peaceful transition to democracy,
a nuclear-weapons free Iran, an end to the death penalty, separation of church
and state, cultural and religious pluralism, multi-party democracy, gender
equality, freedom of speech, the rule of law and independence of judges,
private property and a market economy.

It is time to encourage a
non-violent transition for Iran by recognizing the coalition of Iranians inside
and outside their country who seek a democratic nation by quickly
de-proscribing the PMOI.